


Pennsylvania and the Shadow

by heyabooboo



Series: Post-Apocalyptic Club of Kickass survivors [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Domestics (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, College Student Stiles, Gen, Hunter Allison, M/M, Werewolf Derek, gratuitous pop culture references, off-screen violence, there are some references to the fallout games with creatures and factions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 09:21:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15482640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyabooboo/pseuds/heyabooboo
Summary: It’s quiet now, without noise pollution from cars on freeways or planes flying overhead or even the barkings of the dogs. God, Stiles really misses dogs.ORThe Teen Wolf/Domestics/Fallout AU that literally nobody asked for.





	Pennsylvania and the Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Please, _please_ keep in mind that this is a Post-Apocalyptic Alternate Universe and as one, there'll be violence. There's talk of people dying, of one or both main characters killing other people, and there's aftermath of off-screen violence that the duo stumble across. Please heed the warnings and if these things present an issue for you, feel free to back out of here slowly.
> 
> That being said, I finally got around to watching The Domestics and then five hours later, talked Ripley into watching it with me and the idea just wouldn't go away. Keep in mind that this is just Part One of a bigger series - I'm planning on posting small ficlets like these for probably every state they go through? I dunno, I haven't made up my mind yet. Please let me know what you think by leaving a kudos or a comment, though!
> 
> Feel free to come say hi on [tumblr!](http://www.heyabooboo.tumblr.com)

“What’s her name?” Stiles asks, not just to break the silence in the car, but also because he caught sight of the only other car on the road in the passenger side-mirror, ‘bout a quarter mile behind them. It’s the third car she’s driven, and this is their fourth. Idly, he wonders what has happened to the cars they’ve abandoned; if anyone’s found them, what they found in them and what people have assumed about them, based on what they’ve found. He knows for a fact that in the second car of their’s, someone at some time will find what will damn near be a horror scene. They’ll probably think someone died in it. Then again, there are a lot of places where people have died, now, so maybe that car won’t be so different from any other abandoned car.

“How am I supposed to know?” Derek’s voice is rough and he’s already reaching for one of the water bottles in the cupholder between them, simultaneously unscrewing the cap and driving. Stiles would be lucky, being blessed with that amount of dexterity and coordination - he’d probably crash the dang car if he tried that. It’s the reason why Derek drives now: Stiles crashed the first car they’d commandeered. Hey, at least he crashed it into a bad guy.

“Picked her up the same time I picked you up.” his voice is clearer after the drink and Stiles eyes the water level, noting that Derek’s been seemingly rationing his servings for the past day. They had supplies, Stiles doesn’t understand why he’s rationing until suddenly, it’s clear that Derek’s playing smart, not knowing if they’ll be able to replenish at the next stop. Or maybe even rationing because there may be a caravan they come across, willing to trade them some bullets or medicinal supplies for fresh water.

It’s been three months since The Reset, and already there’s factions of people and trading caravans and Radio DJ’s supplying news. Rumor even has it that Wayne Newton survived and holed himself in a booth in Las Vegas and is only playing Oldies. It’s Stiles’ favorite rumor: there’s not enough good news in the world anymore.

He doesn’t realize he’s been quiet for a stretch of road until Derek peeks over at him, and he realizes he’s also been caught staring. It’s embarrassing, but the feeling comes and goes as he stares out the windows, taking in the empty fields and groves they’re driving by. The trees are getting thicker, the further west they go. They’re in East Pennsylvania, if Stiles has been keeping the paper map on his lap up-to-date correctly.

“I feel like a Winchester with this thing.” he’d joked when Derek had slapped the map and a package of crayola markers into his hand. That had been two hours after Derek had saved him from a group of people calling themselves Gunners and Stiles had begged him for his help. It’s been six days since then and the panic sometimes claws at his chest, makes his lungs feel like crepe paper, thin and easily susceptible to tearing and wholly incapable of taking in air, and then he’ll remember the story of the tortoise and the hare and push the panic down with logic. A cross-country road trip used to take two weeks, but without GPS and new, mutated creatures and just the fucking _people_ gone crazy, it will most likely take them longer. He tries not to feed the panic by thinking of just how much longer and what’ll happen in that time.

“So, was she following you in Brooklyn before you --” he stumbles over outright calling Derek his hero. Derek knows what he did, shooting those men who had Stiles cornered. If his past reactions are anything to go by, he doesn't want to talk about it. Stiles doesn’t blame him, he doesn’t want to talk about it either. “-- or was she following me?” he doesn’t know why he would have a shadow, a sniper with incredible accuracy and a penchant for scoring headshots on _Mad Max_ looking rejects. Somehow, he doesn’t find it very likely that the death-dealer that watches their backs has anything to do with himself, and more about the werewolf he’s gone and aligned himself with.

Derek’s eyebrows are unamused when he takes his eyes off the road to look at Stiles again. “Seeing as how we’re traveling _together_ , I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say she’s just following _us_ .” God, but Derek turning on the sass really helps Stiles out. More than he can ever explain, anyway. It just… feels so _normal_ in a world that’s decidedly _not_ anymore.

“Okay,” Derek has a level head that stays calm in really intense situations. See: escaping New York alive and (mostly) unharmed. Stiles appreciates it, because he _can be_ logical, his emotions just get the better of him too easily and he spirals. It’s helped, raiding that pharmacy and finding some Adderall. He also ignores the panic of just what’ll happen when all the Adderall is gone, focuses instead on things he _can_ control. “That’s a fair point, but don’t you ever wonder ‘ _who is she_ ’?”

In the city, she’d stayed a lot closer to them. Her face had been young, maybe around the same age as him, but she’d had cold eyes and a serious mouth, even if she had been drop-dead pretty with her dark hair and long legs. Stiles had been too shocked when she’d jumped in their car like a fucking superhero and driven them away from something like a giant lizard with claws while Derek had been bleeding out in the backseat, to ask her anything important, like her name or her age or whether she was single. Funny how those things don’t really matter in a post-apocalyptic world. Funny how Stiles’ sexuality threw bi right out the window and zoomed straight to gay when Derek showed up. Funny how these things aren’t funny in the slightest.

“As long as she keeps helping us, I don’t care who she is _or_ what her name is.” and that is the last thing either of them say for a couple of hours, until the sun starts hanging low in the sky and Derek turns them off the highway to look for a safehouse to stay the night in. The roads aren’t safe to travel on at night, something about the creatures being more nocturnal and the people were just plain easier to deal with during the day… Honestly, Stiles doesn’t care about the specifics, just as long as he gets back to California.

“Do you think it’s safe?” he asks as Derek engages the parking brake and shuts off their vehicle. Their windows are down from the heat and it’s cooler, under the old oak trees lining the driveway to the equally old farm house. He doesn’t hear their shadow’s car on the driveway behind them, so she must’ve stayed in the small neighborhood they passed. Derek pulls one of the rifles they looted off the Gunners in New York from the backseat, like he doesn’t know Stiles’ hands shake when he’s within a foot of a gun. Kind of ironic, the Sheriff’s kid, afraid of guns. Yeah, he doesn’t find that funny, either.

Stiles hides the shake of his hands in drinking water and updating the map before tucking it in the glovebox next to his Wasteland Survival Guide - his little journal where he updates the factions and where they are, what they look like and what they stand for. So far, there’s more question marks than definitives, but then again, it’s only been three months. Loads of time for some to die out and others to rise up and take their place. He reaches for the duffel bag of necessities behind Derek’s seat and they both roll up the windows before they leave the car.

It’s quiet now, without noise pollution from cars on freeways or planes flying overhead or even the barkings of the dogs. God, Stiles really misses dogs.

The duffel’s strap goes across his chest to rest against his hip and he digs his hand in it to grip the handle of the hammer he hides there with a sweaty palm. It’s surprising, how many times an innocuous little thing like a hammer or a meat tenderizer has helped him escape in the past two months, even more so in the last week.

They approach the farmhouse slowly, rifle tucked securely into Derek’s shoulder, like he doesn’t have claws and fangs that do just as bad of damage. Then again, the rifle’s a range weapon, where as the claws and the fangs are melee. And Stiles has melee downpat, so they can’t _both_ be melee. Methodically, they clear the first story and Stiles relaxes, nodding when Derek whispers to him that he’s going to clear the second story. He doesn’t need to come with Derek for that, he can loot the first floor and scrounge up food better than he can fight. It’s an easy routine they fall into, clearing their sixth house together.

He finds half a tube of toothpaste in the medicine cabinet before he decides to rifle through the vanity’s drawers and hits the jackpot: new toothbrushes, a full tube of toothpaste still in the box, _so_ many rolls of toilet paper, and back-up bottles of shampoo and conditioner. He sweeps the bottles of aleve and benadryl into the bag, too, pausing on the bottle labeled ‘papaya enzymes’. He mouths the words as he rotates the bottle in his hand, wondering just what the fuck an enzyme from a papaya does. All the explanation he gets is a dosage and the words ‘dietary supplement’ before he goes looking for Derek, eyes still on the bottle curiously.

He spots him taking up most of a doorway upstairs and heads that way out of habit. “Hey Derek?” he greets, even though he hadn’t been hiding his footsteps as he climbed the stairs, and from what little Derek’s explained, their hearing is Pretty Damn Good. “The hell is a ‘papaya enzyme’ and what’s it do?” he asks before he steps up behind Derek and immediately forgets his question.

Raiders had been here - or maybe... Maybe that other group, the Nailers? Stiles doesn’t know enough about the crime scenes they leave behind to know how to spot a difference between the two: that takes a certain amount of finesse and skill that Stiles just doesn’t have the stomach for. Derek only seems to move because he’s standing there and covers the dismembered and disemboweled bodies on the bed with a blanket he finds in the closet. Still, Stiles saw it and it’s burned in his memory now. The scene’ll haunt his nightmares for a good, long while.

“I’ll clean this up,” Derek promises, stepping up close into his eyesight until he’s the only thing Stiles can see. He blinks from where he’d been staring at the bed and sucks in a breath at the same time he tries to swallow. His throat’s dry again and they move into the hallway as Derek closes the door to that bedroom with a soft click. “Mostly they’re used for nausea.” Derek motions to his hand, still holding the pills.

“Oh.” he stares at the bottle before he jerks his eyes back up to Derek’s. “How many should I take? They’re chewable, if that makes a difference.”

Derek seems to think about it for a few seconds, eyes serious and wide, looking for something on Stiles’ face that must not be there, if the minute relaxing of his shoulders is anything to go by, “Four’s a good number.”

They eat in silence, just a few candles lit around the table. Derek takes out their portable radio and flicks it on, turns the knob this way and that, only receiving white noise and squeals before he turns it off with a sigh.

“How can you not care who she is?” Stiles wonders what it says about him that he can already read Derek’s expressions, a week after meeting him. Then again, an eye roll isn’t generally a hard thing to translate.

“Like this.” Derek says and then stares Stiles down while he shrugs, and Stiles can feel the grin growing on his face.

“Oh my God, a _Friends_ reference? Really?” and then Derek’s softening just a little and giving him the smallest smile back in the form of one side of his mouth turning up while he ducks his head. “Next, you’ll be quoting _Seinfeld_ at me.”

Derek actually laughs via a sigh through his nose and the candlelight moves, dancing in Derek’s eyes, making them change color from one moment to the next. “No,” he shakes his head, “ _Friends_ was more mine and Laura’s thing. I always felt a kinship with Joey, growing up in a big family full of sisters. Laura would use it to remind me weekly that we weren’t, in fact, raised by wolves and to be more ‘human’.” he explains and Stiles melts into a pile of goo on his uncomfortable wooden dining chair from the Better Homes and Garden’s catalogue of fall 1993.

“God, I love it when you talk about your family.” Derek looks surprised and Stiles wants to stop talking, to quit digging this hole of embarrassment he’s gotten himself into, but whoop, there goes his mouth, still yammering away. “Your eyes go all soft, but your eyebrows and your mouth turn all angry. It’s _adorable_.”

Derek blinks at him for long seconds, face blank until he shakes his head as if to clear it and says, “All of those things are physically impossible, Stiles.” he’s gruff and it makes the smile on Stiles’ face stick for extra moments. “Now, go brush your teeth, we’re going to bed.”

They brush their teeth together, and Stiles ignores the warmth of something as simple and domestic as this by counting brushstrokes before spitting and rinsing his mouth. Derek had disposed of the bodies past the line of trees out back earlier on, but the door is still closed to that bedroom and Stiles passes by it with lowered eyes, going straight for the second bedroom on the landing and sliding in the side furthest from the door.

Derek follows him in, shutting the door behind them and pulling the blanket back until he too, can slide in. The first night Derek told him they were sleeping together, Stiles sputtered and tripped, making more vowel sounds than actually stringing words together to form a coherent sentence. After Derek miraculously healed from grievous wounds on the third day of them knowing each other and ditching that famous second car, Stiles understood what Derek meant when he told him he could rest easier, knowing where he was. Sharing a bed was the only way Derek could get any sleep, and it wasn’t like it was _so_ _difficult_ on Stiles. Harder, maybe… but only to a certain part of his anatomy, and he understands the importance of _appropriate timing_.

The candles get extinguished from where Derek had carried them up from the dining room, and it’s stupid, how Stiles still gets nervous without some sort of light on. He doesn’t even think he’s done anything when Derek’s soft voice murmurs, “We can’t leave a candle burning and wasting batteries leaving a flashlight on is just stupid.” and God, Stiles knows that. He just... gets jumpy in the dark, where he can't see shit and his imagination goes wild.

"We should ask her, her name." it's glaringly obvious he's avoiding talking about his fear of the dark. Derek shifts around next to him, seemingly to get comfortable, moving until he's on his side, his back to Stiles and he's a whole solid line, warm, at Stiles' arm.

“She’s a hunter, Stiles. It doesn’t matter what her name is. _Goodnight_ .” and he lets out one last sigh before he’s obviously trying to fall asleep, but Stiles can’t rest. Not until he gets an answer for the one thing that’s bothered him the most: he doesn’t know her name to thank her for getting them out of there with that... lizard thing. He should also find out just what that lizard thing’s name is, too, but, you know -- _priorities_.

Stiles silently appreciates the warmth at his side for a moment, but slides out of bed and kneels, handsing around the floor until he’s found his duffel and the flashlight therein. Then he’s turning, moving towards one of the front-facing windows, back towards the way they came, clicking the light on and off rhythmically.

“ _What are you doing_?” Derek sounds tired, and… almost homicidal. Stiles is glad he knows Derek likes him, even if he acts like Stiles is a pain in the ass. You don’t just save pains in the ass and then offer to travel with them across the country so that said pain in the ass could be reunited with their family. Nope, if they bothered you that much, you would’ve just left ‘em.

“Asking her what her name is in morse code.” and really, Derek should’ve known that. He makes sure his tone is judgy enough, since Derek can’t see his face.

“This is how you die, Stiles.” Derek warns, voice low and dry. And it’s that sound, the flop of Derek onto his back and the sigh into the room that is the final piece of the guilt cake. He finishes the question to their shadow and tucks the flashlight in his palm, fisting both hands into the pockets of the pajama pants he liberated from the fourth house’s dresser. They’re too big on him - they’re long enough, but they’re also far baggier than he would’ve ever picked out, before he had to borrow clothes from abandoned houses. (Stores just aren’t safe, with the Ghouls lurking there.) He stares out the window for long moments, just waiting for a response in borrowed clothes from people who are probably dead. Stiles tries not to think of that, it just feeds the panic.

“Come on, I wanna get the fuck out of Pennsylvania as soon as possible,” Derek complains when Stiles still hasn’t moved, “I was planning on leaving at dawn.”

Stiles is about to move back to bed, forlorn, when a light shining back gives him pause. It takes three repeats of the same word until he’s pieced it all together - he’s much better using a pen and paper with morse code instead of his weirdly-wired brain. But he still gets it and places the flashlight back into its spot in his bag and slides into bed and it’s his turn to curl up close to his bedmate, trying not to react when Derek leans into him.

“Her name is Allison.” he shares the news, closing his eyes, ready for sleep now that he’s got his nagging question answered.

“How nice for her.” Derek grumbles back, and Stiles smiles into his pillow.


End file.
